


Cassandra Gets A Partner

by michellemagly



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Buddy Cop AU, F/F, based on fanart, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-02 20:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11517072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michellemagly/pseuds/michellemagly
Summary: Based on illustrations by tumblr user rukiana09 and a string of reaction tweets from David Gaider. Cassandra Pentaghast is a detective in the Skyhold police force, working for Captain Cullen Rutherford. One morning, the squad is called out to investigate a brutal murder just outside a jewelry store that was robbed right around the same time. Their only lead? An untrustworthy elf that goes by the name Sera and owns far too many illegal knives for Cassandra's comfort. When Sera's testimony points to the infamous Varric Tethras, the case only gets more complicated for Cassandra. Perhaps too complicated. Can she and Sera work together to bring the case to a close and serve justice?





	1. Chapter 1

The rain fell hard enough that the blood began to wash away in a trickling stream. Cassandra Pentaghast scowled and took a step back as the blood ran near her boots. It flowed down from a body that had been cut to ribbons. The ragdoll lay in the street, glass flecks surrounding it and trailing back to a shattered window pane. The pane’s remaining jagged edges clung to scraps of cloth and skin rent from the corpse. Whoever had chucked this person through the window wanted the death to be visceral and public.

Someone spoke next to her, “What kind of jewel thief causes a spectacle?”

Cassandra turned and frowned at a tall, broad-shouldered man with curly blonde hair. “One that wants to send a message.”

The man, a captain on the skyhold police force whose badge read  _ C. Rutherford, _ knelt down and reached a blue latex-wrapped hand out toward the victim. He plucked out a shard of glass embedded in their skull and slipped it into an evidence bag. “I just don’t see how violence like this furthers their agenda.”

“That is what I aim to find out.” Cassandra reached a hand up and adjusted the straps on her body armor. The earpiece she wore squawked with the voices of other officers, but none of the messages were directed at her. No leads, yet. Not a single piece of trace evidence. All they knew was the jewelry shop had been swept clean of its precious gems, and that the alarm had only been triggered when the sales clerk opening the store up for the morning had been tossed through the window.

“Captain, Detective!” someone called out.

Both Cassandra and Cullen glanced up, Cullen getting to his feet with a groan that had Cassandra smirking. He faked at being a tired old man well enough some days.

Officer Harding walked toward them with a wiry elf woman in tow. Cassandra eyed her like she might eye a suspect. The woman had choppy blonde hair that looked like she’d cut it with a knife, of which she certainly had an arsenal to choose from. Cassandra furrowed her brow as she made note of certain knives that were unquestionably illegal dangling in broad daylight from her belt.

The elf clutched a compound bow, grinning as she ran a hand down the bowstring, fingers plucking at it like she was playing a guitar and going for a casual stroll through a park, not armed to the teeth and being escorted through a crime scene. The quiver full of arrows on her back suggested she was serious about using it, too.

“What is it, Harding?” Cullen asked.

Harding led the elf woman around the body and nodded to both of them. “This lady here said she saw someone in the alley last night.”

“Oh did she?” Cassandra turned to meet the woman’s gaze, not bothering to hide her snarl. “Do you care to inform us, miss…?”

“The name’s Sera.” She spoke with a ferelden accent thicker and far lower class than Cullen’s. “And yeah, I saw some shady bloke running around here last night, and yeah, I intend to cooperate so you can pull whatever’s smells so bad out from under your nose, pointy lady.”

Cullen chuckled and Officer Harding trembled with a barely concealed laugh. Cassandra arched a brow and fixed Cullen with a steely gaze. “Pointy?” she asked.

Cullen shrugged. “Your face is a bit...pointy.”

“See, the dandy gets it.” The comment silenced any further laughter from Cullen. Cassandra smirked and gave the elf girl another once-over. Her tight shirt and stockings revealed sinewy muscles. She was lean and possibly trained for lethality. What Cassandra could not understand was why she had not been arrested yet, or why she had even approached the police. Everything about her suggested underworld connections. “So, how do you want to do this, tall-dark-and-grumpy?” Sera stepped around Officer Harding and into Cassandra’s personal space. She stopped short a few inches of them touching, smiling up at her with a grin that flashed all of her teeth. “Will it be my place, or yours?”

“The police station, Miss Sera, downtown.” Cassandra crossed her arms.

Sera took a step back. “Oh I’ll go down your town.” She snorted and Cassandra released a disgusted noise from the back of her throat.

“Take the witness in your cruiser, Offer Harding. The captain and I will follow you shortly.”

Sera erupted with giggles and the three of them stared. “It's funny, right?” She nodded at Officer Harding. “Cuz she’s a dwarf.”

Silence, and then, “Oh, the word  _ shortly _ .” Harding smiled and shook her head. “Come on. I’ll let you ride shotgun if you leave all your weapons in the back seat.”

“Only if you let me play with the siren.”

Cassandra watched them walk back to the police cruiser. She then watched Sera unload an improbable amount of weapons into the back of Harding’s vehicle. Her eyes widened as Sera extracted a blade from a sheath between her shoulders.

“How many sharp objects does one girl need?” Cullen asked.

Cassandra shrugged and nodded toward their own police cruiser. “We need to pull her file. She doesn’t strike me as the law-abiding type.” They walked over to the cruiser and Cassandra slid into the driver’s seat.

“Then why come to us?” In the passenger’s seat, Cullen punched in Sera’s general description and looked through the database for a potential criminal match. “She’s either clean or too good to get caught. There’s no bulletin out for an elf matching her description.”

“Hmf, I still want to run her fingerprints.” Cassandra started the vehicle and pulled out of the crime scene, setting out for the station.

“On what grounds? Yeah, she’s armed to the teeth, but let’s just try talking to her first.” Cassandra did not respond, so Cullen leaned in and said, “Look, for now she’s all we’ve got. There’s no video footage, no fingerprints. Half our blood spatter washed away before anyone took pictures.” They drove in silence, and when they pulled into the police station parking lot, Cassandra saw Harding leading Sera to the entrance. To her dismay, Sera turned to look back and caught her gaze. She winked before walking with Harding inside the large brick building. “Just give her a chance. That’s all I’m saying.”

“A chance to do what? Prove me right?” Cassandra put the car in park and unbuckled.

As she and Cullen walked up to the entrance, he shrugged. “It really depends on your judgment.” He pushed the door open for them, and there stood Sera, waiting unarmed with her arms crossed and head cocked to one side as she spoke with the head of internal affairs, Josephine Montilyet. Josephine had her glasses on, large aviator spectacles with a pearl chain looping down from the stems and around her neck. Her clean blazer and skirt where the picture of elegance, like always. She smiled and laughed at something Sera said, much to Cassandra’s annoyance. Josephine scribbled something on her clipboard and walked down the hall, her heels clacking against the tile floor.

“Take her to the south conference room. I’ll meet you there,” Cassandra muttered. Before Cullen could respond, she took off down the hall, shoving past Sera as she made to catch up with Josephine. “Ms. Montilyet.” Cassandra sidled up beside her, trying to peek a glance at the clipboard, but Josephine held it tightly to her chest.

“Good morning, Detective.” Josephine smiled at her, but did not break from her quick stride. She weaved through the main work room, dodging other officers and desk workers as they milled about their own workstations. The buzz of chatter and incessantly ringing phones did little to stop Josephine in her tracks. Cassandra could hardly hear herself think, however.

“I was hoping I could ask you about our latest suspect, Sera. She did not provide us with much personal information.”

“Oh, of course. Here is her full name.” Josephine pulled her clipboard back and scribbled down something on a piece of paper and tore off the scrap. She handed it to Cassandra with a smile. “Good luck with your investigation.”

Cassandra took the paper and ran to her office. She opened her database and plugged in Sera’s full name, waiting for a response. When the page loaded, however, she received a little “Access Restricted” note, and nothing else. With a grunt, Cassandra shut the program and grabbed her mug of cold coffee. She stormed into the kitchen and dumped the swill down the sink and poured herself another cup. When she sipped it, she could tell it was stale, but it was hot at least. Cassandra marched to the conference room and opened the door. Cullen and Sera sat opposite each other. They both turned to look at her when she stepped inside, and Sera wore the most irritating grin possible.

“So Pointy, did you run my file?” She rested an elbow on the table and propped her chin up on her hand.

Cassandra frowned and took a sip from her mug. “I tried to,” she muttered.

The cackle that Sera released could have shattered glass. It made Cassandra grind her teeth. “And you couldn’t see anything, could you?” She laughed even more. “I have higher clearance than you, ha!”

Cullen looked between the two. “Wait, you’re with law-enforcement?”

“That’s need-to-know information, okay? And neither of you need to know.”

Cassandra exhaled into her coffee mug before slowly inhaling the scent of of the brew.  _ Deep breaths. Deep breaths. _ “So why are you here, then. What use are you to us?”

Sera leaned back in her chair. “That kid outside the jewelry store, he was just a clerk. He didn’t deserve to be tossed through a window like that. And he probably wouldn't have even put up a fight. Whoever did it was just getting off on it. That's sick, right? I wanna find the arsehole that did it.”

Cassandra arched a brow at her. She had to admit that, despite the near-unintelligible nature of her speech, there was something relatable in the concern, the anger, in Sera’s voice. “And this sort of work won't detract from your...classified position?”

Sera shrugged. “Well, I mean, gotta get it all approved, first. Don’t know if they’ll let me work the case, but I’ll tell ya what I know right now.” She reached into the waistband of her tights and pulled out a scrap of paper and pen. She unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table. Cassandra made a mental note to sanitize the space after. “He was a short fellah, had to be a dwarf.” She began to sketch crude and squiggly lines that could not possibly be of use. Cassandra frowned as she watched Sera work. “And he had this sort of cat burglar outfit on. Saw him shifting around in the alley after the alarm went off. Don’t know when he chucked the body or why he came back. Don’t know if he even could have tossed it through the window like that, considering his size.” Slowly, the lines started taking shape. A middle-aged dwarven man stared up at them from the paper. “Makes me think he had an accomplice, right?” She sketched in a big, crooked nose, scars, and in his hands he carried a crossbow.

“Varric Tethras, that little sneak,” Cassandra snarled. She slammed her coffee cup on the conference table, sloshing its contents.

“So you’ve met?” Cullen asked. He leaned back in his chair and stroked the stubble on his chin.

“Only in passing, and always orchestrated so he could gloat about whatever scheme he had just pulled off.” Cassandra snatched the paper away from Sera. “He’s always got his hands in something dirty.” She ignored the fit of giggles from Sera. “But I never imagined him being a murderer, or even an accomplice to it.” She furrowed her brow and picked her coffee up again, taking a slow sip. “I don’t know what Varric thinks he will gain by tossing sales clerks through windows, but if he and...whoever he’s working with are doing this, then they are both very dangerous.”

“So we bring him in. You have a history together. Do you know where we can find him?” Cullen asked.

Cassandra shook her head. “He’s too slippery, too connected with the underworld. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Well, that’s a shame. Sounds like you could use someone who knows about getting their  hands dirty,” said Sera.

“I know how to get my hands dirty, thank you very much Miss Sera-”

“Psh, doubt it.” Sera pointed at her with her pen. “You’re the most law-abidey person to ever abide the laws.”

Cassandra looked over at Cullen who shrugged. “She’s got a point.”

She snorted and stepped away from the conference table. “Sometimes I wonder if you enjoy tormenting me, Captain.”

“Where are you going?” Cullen asked.

“To get some actual work done.” Cassandra opened the door and let it click shut behind her. She went back to her office and eased into her chair.  _ First things first. Pull up Varric’s file. _ What little information she could find in the database was not that helpful. The listed sightings of Varric did not indicate a pattern of any kind. There was no correlating property damage or violence listed with his recent thefts. She had to grudgingly admit that Sera’s accomplice theory made sense. Cassandra finished off the last of her coffee and closed the file. Someone knocked on her open office door and she glanced up. “Josephine.”  _ How long have I been in here? _

“Hello, Detective. Do you have a moment?”

“I do.” Cassandra gestured at the chair in front of her desk. “What is it?”

“It’s about the jewelry murder case.” She opened the case on a tablet and tapped a stylus against it. “We wanted to allocate resources that would be as helpful as possible to your investigation.”

“And…?”

Sera pushed past Josephine and draped herself across Cassandra’s desk, sending documents scattering. “Looks like I’m your partner, pointy.” She chuckled and rolled on her back, laying on the desk and staring up at Cassandra with that same stupidly annoying grin.

Cassandra inhaled sharply and clenched her jaw tightly. “ _ No. _ ”


	2. Chapter 2

Cassandra leaned against the wall of the bar and tried not to think about how many disgusting traces of whatever she was probably getting on her jacket. _Too late._ Next to her, Sera sat on a bar stool with a large stein of beer in hand as she shouted incomprehensibly at the football game on the bar television.

“Come on, friggin’ goalie, use your head!” She slammed a fist on the table as the ball soared into the net unblocked. “Arse. Tits!” She took a drink of beer and continued muttering obscenities.

“You're causing a scene,” Cassandra muttered.

“I gotta do something to make up for the way you're standing there looking all...authoritative.” Sera chuckled. “I bet you'd make all sorts of people wet themselves if you were just holding a riding crop.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh come on. No one’s ever shared with you some naughty fantasy involving a lot of leather?”

Cassandra furrowed her brow and leaned away from Sera’s sloshing beer. “No, never.”

Sera took a long drink from her beer and snorted into the glass. “Well, some people haven’t been very honest with you, then.”

“How long do we have to wait?” Cassandra asked, scanning the bar again in hopes of seeing anyone who would look vaguely like Sera’s contact. The small bar was packed full of people watching the game, many of them screaming with the same ferocity Sera showed. Cassandra hated to admit it, but Sera had done a wonderful job of blending into the crowd. Cassandra, on the other hand, suffered from the continued curse of constantly acting like she was on duty. She looked like law enforcement no matter how she tried to hide it.

Sera nudged her and slid off her bar stool. “Alright, try to take that stick out of your bum. Here’s our mark.”

Cassandra scanned the crowd for an indication of who Sera could possibly be referring to, but did not see anyone in particular. Nevertheless, she followed Sera over to a man who stood at the bar, beer glass in hand. He wore a red sweater with the hood drawn up over his face. She saw his scruffy beard, a scowl, and not much else considering he kept his gaze turned down toward his drink.

“Hey there,” Sera said, sidling up to him. “Red Jenny said you had a lead.”

“Well, I am a friend of her.” He reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, clutched between two fingers.

Sera snatched it up and slipped it into the tight pocket of her yellow plaid pants. “Cheers mate.” She put something small in his hand, a thumb drive or memory card. Cassandra could not tell. She turned to Cassandra and nodded toward the exit. “Shall we?”

Cassandra nodded and followed her through the crowd of screaming football fans. They stepped outside into the muggy afternoon air. Rain had dampened the city, and now a persistent sun threatened to burn away the fog. Cassandra adjusted her leather jacket so it sat better on her shoulders, ignoring the stifling feeling. “So?” she asked as they set off down the sidewalk.

“So what?” Sera asked. She kept her gaze forward, strutting with her hands shoved deep in denim shirt pockets.

“So, where do we go from here?”

“Back to the car, silly.”

“But do we have a lead?”

Sera sneered at her. “Are you thick? We’ll talk about that later, where there aren’t people.” She gestured to the mostly empty street. “It’s bad enough we’re walking down a deserted sidewalk.”

Cassandra felt her cheeks go flush. As annoying as Sera was, she somehow managed to outdo Cassandra in undercover protocol at every turn. _But we aren’t even undercover. She’s just a master of espionage._

Next to her, Sera tripped and stumbled over a tree root that had burst up through the sidewalk. “Ow! Friggin tree!” she yelled as she regained her footing.

Cassandra groaned. _Perhaps not a master, then._ They walked in silence back to where they had parked Cassandra’s SUV a few blocks over in a public lot. She slid into the driver’s side while Sera took the passenger’s seat. As soon as the doors were shut, Sera pulled the scrap of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. Cassandra leaned over to read it, but whatever had been scrawled down looked like gibberish. “What does it say?”

“Shush, will you? I’m getting at that.” Sera pulled a pencil out from the glove compartment and plastered the paper over the dashboard. She leaned over it, muttering to herself as she added scribbles to the paper. She worked with her tongue sticking out between her teeth, like a kid solving a crossword. The minutes ticked by until finally she leaned back in her seat and grinned. “There, happy?” She pried the paper off the dashboard and handed it back to Cassandra.

Cassandra took the paper and frowned at it. She furrowed her brow, following the different lines and notes tracing back and forth through the coded message. The handiwork all culminated in a translated line of text at the bottom of the paper, written out in jagged, messy scrawl.

_Ask Sister Nightingale about who bombed the Chantry._

“All this effort just for a sentence?” Cassandra asked. “Couldn’t he have just said this to us?”

Sera snorted. “Pish. Where’s your respect for ritual? For secrecy?”

“I lost it with practicality.” Cassandra read the line again. “Do you know who Sister Nightingale is?”

“Not a single clue, but this friend of Red Jenny thinks she knows something.” There was a pause between them. “Do _you_ know who Sister Nightingale is?”

Cassandra nodded. “She is an Orlesian bard, possibly connected with Interpol. I had no idea she was in Skyhold.”

“She investigating that big old Chantry building that got blown up last week?”

Cassandra thought back to the news report. The Chantry building had been huge, the biggest one across all of Thedas, and an unknown terrorist had bombed it to pieces. She had argued vehemently that the Skyhold police force dispatch a unit to assist in the investigation, but her request had been denied. “She has to be, and she has to think it is tied to our murderer if your friend is pointing us to her.”

Sera shrugged. “I’m hoping so. He’s an alright kid. Shouldn’t lead us to a dead end.”

“Speaking of dead ends, where do we even start looking for Sister Nightingale? She is not someone who is easily found.”

“Oh, right! Coordinates.” Sera snatched the paper from her and smoothed it over the dash again. She scribbled some more, and after a few minutes circled two numbers. “If you put these into the thing, we’ll know where to go.” She gestured carelessly at Cassandra’s mounted laptop.

Cassandra squinted at the numbers, then typed them into her car’s navigation system. As soon as she hit enter, a destination popped up on screen, a commercial destination. “For the love Andraste, what is she doing in a shoe boutique?”

Sera laughed and folded up the paper. “Maybe she’s looking to give that bomber the boot, eh?”

“Ugh.” Cassandra shook her head and started the ignition. “If you are going to continue making jokes like that, I’ll need a raise.”

“Who funds you, the municipality?” Sera asked.

Cassandra backed the car out of its parking spot and rolled onto the road. The computer had already plotted a path for them. “Yes.”

“Good luck.”

Cassandra tried to bite back a smile, but it tugged on her lips anyways. “Any advice for how we approach walking into a shoe store?”

“Nope. We go in looking like arsehole law enforcement til Lady Songbird swoops out of the rafters and snatches us up.”

It sounded like a feasible plan to Cassandra. One thing that appealed to her about working with Sera was that the elf never stopped to say they should go check in with superiors before doing something. Technically, this only enabled Cassandra’s bad habits to skirt the chain of command. She glanced over at Sera, who sat playing with an app on her phone. She looked like she could easily blend into a crowd of people if she wanted. She looked more normal than anyone else at the station. _Perhaps I need a little enabling_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short post, but I reached a natural stopping point so here's the new chapter.
> 
> Why do you guys think Sister Nightingale is camped out at a shoe store? What do you want to see from chapter three?


End file.
